Twala and DOST-ASTI: The Research Partnership Behind Twala’s Blockchain Work

Since February 2023, Twala has had a research and development partnership with the Department of Science and Technology’s Advanced Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI), centered on blockchain applications in digital signatures and digital identity. It is one part of a longer relationship with DOST, and its subject is the same question HashOrigin™ answers for every document Twala seals today.

What DOST-ASTI does

DOST-ASTI is the government’s research and development agency for information and communications technology and microelectronics. It builds the country’s capabilities in both through research, digital infrastructure projects, and capacity-building programs, and it runs ASTICON, its annual convention on emerging technologies.

For a startup working on how documents and identities can be trusted online, it is the natural public partner. The questions are technical, they are national in scope, and the answers end up inside government processes as much as private ones.

The agreement

Twala and DOST-ASTI signed a Memorandum of Understanding on February 28, 2023, to accelerate research and development in blockchain technology. Under it, the two conduct research studies, share expertise and knowledge, and draw on each other’s resources and capabilities, and Twala can work with DOST-ASTI’s network of partners and stakeholders.

The focus was specific from the start: blockchain applications in digital signatures and digital identity, with e-governance among the intended uses.

Part of a longer line of DOST support

The partnership followed public funding. In August 2022, DOST’s Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development (DOST-PCIEERD) awarded Twala a ₱4.6 million grant through its Startup Grant Fund Program. Selection was competitive: six of 38 applicants received grants that cycle. Twala put the grant toward the security and user experience of its signature platform and toward its blockchain research.

Since then, Twala has taken part in DOST-ASTI’s convention twice:

• ASTICon 2024. On July 19, 2024, at the first ASTICon, held for DOST-ASTI’s 37th anniversary at Novotel Manila in Cubao, Quezon City, Atty. Third Bagro, Twala’s co-founder and General Counsel, presented “Building the Network of Trust: Blockchain & AI Use Cases in Government Agencies,” on how government offices can keep digital identities and documents tamper-resistant.
• ASTICON 2025. On August 5, 2025, CEO Engr. Jeffrey Reyes gave the keynote “Rewiring Trust in the Age of AI,” under the theme “Science-Powered Innovation.” His argument was that once AI can convincingly fake text, images, and voices, trust has to be verified rather than assumed. “We live in a time where seeing is no longer believing. But verifying is,” he said.

DOST was also among the partners of the October 19, 2026 launch of electronic notarization in the Philippines, where the first two eNotarized documents were notarized on Twala.

Where the research shows up

The problem the partnership was set up around is easy to state. When a document is digital, anyone can make a perfect copy, and an edit leaves no trace on the page. How does someone who receives it prove that it is exactly the file that was signed, without having to trust a single company’s database?

In production, Twala answers that with HashOrigin. Every document Twala seals, whether signed, timestamped, or notarized, gets a digital seal inside the file and a fingerprint outside it: the sealed file’s SHA-256 hash, batched every 15 minutes into a Merkle root and anchored on the Polygon blockchain. Only the fingerprints go on the chain, never the documents or any personal data, and anyone holding the document’s anchor proof can check it with their own tools. Our plain-language explainer on HashOrigin walks through each step.

That design follows from the government use case Atty. Bagro described at ASTICon. A registry, a court, or a frontline office has to confirm a document at the counter, in seconds, from the file itself, and it may not have a contract with the company that produced it.

Why public research matters here

Trust infrastructure is easier to accept when its foundations are open to inspection. Twala’s signature and identity technology was built in the Philippines, with funding from the government’s science agency and a research partnership with its ICT institute, on open standards that anyone can check: X.509 certificates, RFC 3161 timestamps, and a public blockchain. For agencies and enterprises deciding whether to accept eNotarized and digitally signed documents, that history is part of the evidence.

More on DOST’s role, and on the other institutions Twala works with, is in who stands behind Twala. To see how blockchain fits an enterprise’s records, read why Twala anchors documents on a public blockchain.

Twala is a Supreme Court-accredited Electronic Notarization Facility (ENF) and a DOST-backed Philippine legal technology company.